In 2014, Ann Leckie's ANCILLARY JUSTICE swept the SF awards and for good reason. Ann writes Cherryh-flavored SF that sets an incredibly high bar, the sort of book you savor until the end and then loath to put down.

I caught up with Ann to talk about her sequel, ANCILLARY SWORD, which goes on sale in October. Add it to your recommended reads list. Do it now. Haven't read JUSTICE? That's okay. SWORD stands well-enough alone. Leave a comment below for a chance to win a free copy. I'll announce the winner 9/24/2014.

WCB: In your first book, ANCILLARY JUSTICE, we met your protagonist, Breq, as a sentient starship named Justice of Toren, as a group of Ancillary soldiers named Justice of Toren One Esk, and as a single part of that group - One Esk Nineteen. For more on ANCILLARY JUSTICE, check out my interview with Ann here. In ANCILLARY SWORD she’s just Breq, or Fleet Captain Breq and her newfound loneliness is very apparent, painful even. As you wrote ANCILLARY SWORD, was it difficult for you to let go of Breq’s past selves and focus solely upon her?

AL: Not really. Since the events of Ancillary Sword pick up very soon after Ancillary Justice, I was really just continuing on with who she was at that point.

WCB: ANCILLARY JUSTICE & SWORD both touch upon themes of colonialism, worker exploitation and social injustice. In your books, the plantation is alive and well, but the workers pick Rachhaai Tea instead of cotton. What inspired these particular elements of your storyline?

AL:So, actually, I did some research into how tea is actually grown, in the real world. In fact, the folks who pick tea are in a lot of cases not paid much at all, and sometimes live and work in horrendous conditions. Try this http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10634065/Abused-workers-toil-for-Tetley-tea.html which is from February of this year--months after I turned in AS. So, that's a real thing. Tea is the number one drink in the world, not counting plain water, and it's hugely profitable for the folks who sell it. Not so much for the folks who actually make it.

And of course tea is heavily tied into colonial projects. The Indian tea industry is a result of the British wanting to break the Chinese monopoly on tea. They tried sneaking plants out to grow in India, but most of the plants died. Eventually they found a variety of Camellia sinensis growing in North East India, and it wasn't long before the first tea plantations were up and running.

And the workers on those plantations? Check out David Crole's Tea: A Text Book of Tea Planting and Manufacture with Some Account of the Laws Affecting Labour in Tea Gardens in Assam and Elsewhere (1897). (http://books.google.com/books?id=IDFJAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false) In particular, check out the chapter called "The Coolie: His Ways and His Worth." Yeah. So, the "coolies" are the people who are actually picking the tea. And they've most of them signed contracts of indenture, committing them to several years of labor. Which supposedly those contracts have been carefully explained to them before they sign. But it becomes clear as the chapter goes on that the tea growers were absolutely not above misrepresenting the workers' obligations and/or rights under the law. And if the workers were unhappy and wanted to quit? They couldn't. Absent running away, which if the grower wanted, he could try to have them found and forcibly brought back.

When I was looking for information on tea culture, that sort of thing was impossible to miss. And it was very much part of what I was thinking of while I was writing.

WCB: Breq is always angry. In ANCILLARY JUSTICE, Breq was almost singularly focused upon exacting her revenge. But in ANCILLARY SWORD, her anger is more others-focused. Would you elaborate a bit on this, how Breq changes and evolves from JUSTICE to SWORD?

AL:Well, to some extent, the events at the end of AJ resolve some of Breq's anger. But not all of it, and I think the source of the anger is still there, and maybe the things that were easy to not think directly about when she wasn't in the Radch are staring her in the face at Athoek, and can't be dismissed or ignored. Or, Breq can't dismiss or ignore them--plenty of citizens in Athoek can and do.

WCB: Breq is fond of music and singing, and a "collector" of songs as you put it. Where did her love of music come from?

AL: Do you mean in terms of her as a character, or in writing terms? I love choral singing, actually, and when I was thinking about what it would mean to have so many bodies one of the first things that came to mind was that someone like that could sing choral music all by themselves! It was too compelling an idea to dismiss.

WCB: Radchaai technology is advanced; the alien Presger tech even more so. The Lord of the Radch and her many ancillaries couldn't exist without a mind-bogglingly complex, interstellar web of communications. Yet you spend little time describing how all of the tech looks or works. (A brilliant choice I think) What sold you on this approach?

AL: So, there are lots of different reasons for choosing that approach. On the one hand, I already had quite a lot of history and cultural information to convey, and only so much space to do it in. Something had to go. Plus, in real life, here and now, we don't actually spend much time pondering how the lights work or how our cars go, we just flip the switch, or get in the car and drive. When I talk about going to the grocery store, I don't generally spend time explaining the vast network of communication, transport, trade, and agriculture that makes the grocery store possible, or the make and model of my car, the road and signal system, or how the engine works. And of course, for some of the tech--ancillaries, for instance--I do have some basis for how it works, but large parts of it consist of Sufficiently Advanced Technology that, frankly, works because I say it does.

Which isn't to say that writers who do choose to focus on the details of the tech are making a lesser choice--it's a different one, and that sort of exploration is one of the things a lot of science fiction readers enjoy. So for some projects, it's the best way to go. But I didn't think it would be the right choice for these books.

WCB: Where did the idea for the Presger come from?

AL: Oh, I'm not really sure! Like a lot of things, they were just...there, and I decided to play with them.

WCB: You’ve said before that you wrote ANCILLARY JUSTICE in isolation. Few of your friends knew you were hard at work on it. But, ANCILLARY SWORD was written under intense speculation. Given that, would you share a bit about your process for writing SWORD? Was it hard to block out the praise and conjecture and just focus on the writing?

AL: I have to admit, it's been very distracting. Fortunately, Sword was nearly done by the time Justice came out. But writing Mercy is very, very odd. I try not to think too much about the various comments and speculation when I'm working on it.

WCB: What’s next in the Imperial Radch Series?

﻿AL:﻿I honestly don't know! Right now I'm focused on finishing Ancillary Mercy, and after that, well, at various points in my career so far, I would approach the end of a project and think "I don't have anything lined up next! What if that's the end of my having viable ideas, the end of my writing?" But it never was, something always came up. So, it'll be something, but I don't know just what, yet.

I'd like to thank Ann Leckie for this interview.

I'd like to thank you for stopping by. Don't forget to leave a comment below for a chance to win a free copy of ANCILLARY SWORD. Thanks for visiting.

If you're looking for more compelling Military Science Fiction, be sure to check out UNBREAKABLE, and the forthcoming INDOMITABLE. iO9 and Kirkus named INDOMITABLEamong the top speculative novels to look for in 2016.

OFF ARMAGEDDON REEF is one of the more inventive SF reads I've come across and the start to a great series. Pretty heavy spiritual overtones, too. Weber is a lay minister in the United Methodist Church and he incorporates a lot of spiritual themes into his writings.

Without giving much away, this book takes the "ark" concept - humanity sending itself into the stars to reboot on a distant planet - and adds a unique twist. The savior of the world is a sentient AI. Jesus meet I-Robot. It's worth the read for that alone.

The encyclopedia of oddly-spelled names makes the book a bit daunting, but if you push past that you'll acclimate...eventually. And, if you’re a binge reader, there's many more in this series and the books are MASSIVE.

(WC) haven't enjoyed a book as much as ANCILLARY JUSTICE in a long time (book one in Ann Leckie's thought-provoking Imperial Radch Series). I'm delighted to interview her about her debut SF novel.

Win a copy of ANCILLARY JUSTICE: (THIS GIVEAWAY HAS NOW ENDED)

Follow me on Twitter and leave a comment below to enter to win a free copy of ANCILLARY JUSTICE(last day to enter is 11/02). Tweet and Facebook about it for 5 extra chances to win - @WCbauers is giving away a copy of ANCILLARY JUSTICE, #wcbauersgiveaway

WCB: The book opens with Breq (and her other names too – more on that in a moment). Was she also the first character to come to you?

AL: Yes, she definitely was. Or, for this story, at any rate. In fact, Anaander Mianaai existed more or lessfrom the beginning of my constructing the universe, so she was already part of the background. But this whole story, yes, began with Breq.

WCB: In the book, you stretch the concept of self and self-awareness in myriad ways. We get to knowthree, um, expressions of your main character within the novel: a sentient starship named Justice of Toren, a group of Ancillary soldiers named Justice of Toren One Esk, and a single part of that group - One Esk Nineteen. As you’ve said before, that’s a lot of “mes.” In the first chapter, we learn One Esk Nineteen’s other name too, Breq – just Breq. All three“selves” see the same things but not in the same ways, or perhaps not with the same perspective. How would you summarize Breq’s many points-of-view, separately and melded together?

AL: Very carefully? Honestly, that was, from the start, one of the most difficult things to tackle. And it required not only a technical approach that would work--that would get the idea across to the reader convincingly without confusing them profoundly--but also required me to settle, in my own mind, just what it meant to be someone, or not be someone, and what the boundaries to a person were, or could be. I actually don't think I settled that for myself terribly well--I came away from the reading I'd done somewhat disturbed, because, although most of us ignore it in day-to-day life, the answer to that question isn't simple, and our sense of being a particular person, or where we draw the line between us and not-us, is very fragile.

WCB: The book opens with Breq alone, on a hostile word, a mere fragment of her former self(selves). She’s lost a lot. And yet, Breq is remarkably resilient, mentally stable, singularly focused. Could a mere human endure such change…and remain sane? Is Breq’s fortitude a testament to the Radch who engineered her, or something more?

AL: I think ordinary human beings are able to endure some amazing things. And I think it's impossible to predict just who will or won't endure those things--to some extent, there are things about yourself that you only discover under terrible trial, and sometimes what you discover isn't what you assumed you would.

In some ways, Breq's focus is a way for her to endure what she's gone through. I'm not a hundred percent sure I'd describe her as entirely sane! But then, like everyone, when terrible things happen, you deal with them as best you can.

I do think that some of Breq's focus and stability isn't entirely human. I also, though, think that if it were another ancillary that had survived, the story would have been very different. If it hadn't been part of One Esk, or if it hadn't been Nineteen, I think that would have made a difference to the way things played out.

WCB:Ancillary Justice has already received tremendous praise, and been compared to the works of C. J. Cherryh, Frank Herbert, Ian Banks, and others. I would also add Alastair Reynolds. It’s been labled a number of things too: grand space opera, Mil SF, and genre bending. How would you characterize the novel? Have the reviews changed your perception of the book?

AL: I have generally called it "Cherryh-flavored space opera." The reviews have really been amazing, and I can't tell you how honored I am to even find myself in the same sentence as Cherryh, Herbert, Banks, or Reynolds.

I was fairly sure the book wouldn't sell. I wrote it anyway, because I didn't see the point in spending so much time and effort on something that didn't really interest me. It's been an enormous privilege to see so many people express enjoyment in the book. And to the extent that reviews have changed how I think of Ancillary Justice, it's been along that axis--where I thought my interest in the story was idiosyncratic, in fact it seems that other people were looking for this sort of thing, too.

WCB: Breq is incredibly old. Thousands of years make for a lot of history. What sort of research did you do as you prepared to write this book?

AL: I nearly always read a fair amount of history and anthropology for my projects. When I'm building partsof a world it helps for me to see the breadth and depth of what's already out there. I also spent some time tracking down very specific details, some of which never made it onto the page but helped me to feel I could visualize things--little nitpicky things like what kind of foods can be produced in what sorts of environments. Or, say, what people do about waste disposal in the arctic.

I also spent some time reading up on physiology and neurology. Not to the point where I'm an expert, but so I had some idea of whether the things I was assuming about how ancillaries worked, or how they saw their officers, might have some basis in real world logic--logic that I might want to rely on at various points in the story.

WCB:Ancillary Justice is being compared to other well-known novels like Foreigner and Dune. Surely, youhave your favorites. Which authors and/or books influenced you the most? Ancillary Justice? And why?

AL:Foreigner would be entirely a fair cop! I think that whole series has left an obvious stamp on Ancillary Justice, and there are a few places where I've deliberately hat-tipped the books because of that. I also cut my SFnal teeth on Andre Norton. And there's certainly a very direct, obvious trace back to LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. I've also learned quite a lot from Jack Vance, over the years.

I do understand comparisons to Banks, they make perfect sense, but in fact, before I wrote Ancillary Justice, I had only read Consider Phlebas, and that quite some time ago. Since then I've also read The Hydrogen Sonata. The world is certainly the poorer for his loss.

WCB: What’s next in the Imperial Radch Series?

AL: Next is Ancillary Sword! Breq is sent to Athoek, where Lieutenant Awn's sister is. Athoek was annexed a few centuries ago, and supposedly is entirely assimilated, but that might not bear close examination. And of course, there's no guessing who might be on which side of a brewing civil war, or how the neighbors--not all of whom are friendly or human--might react to what's going down.

If you're looking for more compelling Military Science Fiction, be sure to check out UNBREAKABLE, and the forthcoming INDOMITABLE. iO9 and Kirkus named INDOMITABLEamong the top speculative novels to look for in 2016.